by Laura Neale of Youbelong
My name is Laura and I am the founder and director of YouBelong. Myself and Emma Major have been producing digital inclusivity blog posts bi-monthly for Premier Digital for the last 6 months and have covered numerous ways of making your digital content and presence more accessible and inclusive during this time.
For the next few months, we will be asking people to share their own experiences of digital inclusivity (if you are interested in doing this, please send an email to info@youbelong.org.uk) as we want readers to understand the importance of digital inclusivity from a personal perspective. I will be kicking this series off with my own story of digital inclusivity and accessibility and sharing the things that have helped me to access digital content and communities.
The main barriers that stop me from being able to engage with others, online and offline, are pain and fatigue.
Offline, this means that I struggle to leave the house, spend time with other people and carry out common day to day tasks.
Online, my main struggles are:
Not always being able to get up and use my computer so being reliant on my phone
Only being able to engage with others for short periods
Being unable to attend any webinars or events online later in the day
Sometimes needing to have my camera off during webinars or other online video calls
Struggling to focus and remember things
Here are some tips for how you can make your online content, events and presence more inclusive for me and others who are energy deficient…
Ensure all of your content is responsive so it can be viewed on a desktop, tablet and mobile device
Keep online meetings, conferences and events short and/or segmented with multiple breaks to enable time to rest throughout the day
Offer a variety of times and days as some may work better than others - my ‘prime time’ is between 10:30am and 1:30pm whereas others have more energy in the evening
Keep content short and to point, summarise at the bottom if you need to go into more depth
Provide multiple ways of taking in information (e.g. audio and visual)
Be accepting of those who need to turn their camera off (there are ways of safeguarding to ensure the safety of the group without needing cameras on)
Be flexible with timings if possible
Record meetings/ webinar sessions if appropriate to enable others who could not join at the time to watch back later
Add captions to videos - this is helpful for many people but I find this helpful for me as I struggle to understand spoken words when I am tired
Add captions to videos - this is helpful for many people but I find this helpful for me as I struggle to understand spoken words when I am tired